The story of the war-like nomad, born with
a bow in his hand and raised in the saddle, is a tale nearly as old as civilization itself. Throughout the centuries, the Xiongnu, Huns,
Turks, and the Mongols, all seared themselves into the memory of the sedentary peoples of
their day. In this video, we will talk about the ones
who came before: the Scythians, the original horse lords of the ancient world. Join us now, as we tell the history of perhaps
the greatest warriors of antiquity, exploring the legacy they left behind from Greece to
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off your first order. That’s K-E-E-P-S dot com slash kings. Before we delve into the Scythians themselves,
we must first contextualize the land which birthed them. The region we today classify as “the steppe”
is a long and narrow corridor, stretching from the Danube River in the west, to the
Mongolian heartland in the east, sandwiched by the haunting birch forests of Siberia to
the north, and by deserts, mountains and inland seas to the south. It is a resource scarce region, an endless
sea of grass. For much of prehistory, it was nearly impossible
for humans to thrive here, but around 3500BC, everything changed. Beginning in two epicenters in modern day
Botai, Kazakhstan and Dereivka, Ukraine, humanity started domesticating wild horses and suddenly,
the vast unending grasslands of the steppe were no longer an impassable ocean, but an
endless horizon. Now able to travel freely between fresh pastures,
the peoples of the steppe were able to sustain much larger herds of goats, sheep and cattle. Thus, the lifestyle of nomadic pastoralism
was born, and the people who practiced it thrived. How the Scythians emerged as a distinct culture
from other nomads is shrouded in mystery. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus offers
us several theories, the most entertaining of which postulates that the first Scythian
king - Scythes - was born from an unlikely union between Heracles and a serpent-woman. Historically speaking, the Scythians probably
trace their origins to the Andronovo culture, which thrived throughout much of the steppe
from about 2000BC. Around the turn of the 1st millennium BC,
the Scythians lived somewhere east of the Altai mountains, where they quickly established
themselves as the greatest warriors of inner Eurasia. Beginning in roughly 900BC they migrated west
across into the Ponto-Caspian region and its surrounding environs, where they conquered
and displaced the nomadic Cimmerians. By the 6th century BC the Scythians proper
had established themselves in the western edge of the steppe, while tribes like the
Massagetae and Sakas, to whom the Scythians were very closely related in language and
culture, enjoyed dominion in the central and eastern steppe. Collectively, they formed a sphere of cultural
domination that extended over a massive territory from Eastern Europe to the fringes of the
Chinese world. We have to remember that the Scythians were
never a single monolithic people, but rather a broad cultural group with regional differences. Broadly speaking, the average Scythian was
pale skinned. According to both Greek and Chinese sources,
light eyes and red hair were common among them as well. While they did dress practically for the cold,
windy steppe they lived in, Scythian clothing was not primitive at all, but highly decorative,
dyed in bright colours, and embroidered with complex patterns. Men dressed in thick sheepskin coats insulated
with wool and held at the waist by sturdy belts decorated with fastening of gold, bronze,
bone or wood, and wore trousers well adapted for constant horse riding. Women dressed much like the men did, after
all the cold steppe was no kinder to them than to their husbands. Both men and women wore fancy headgear, most
common were these felted wool caps, and these gnome-looking pointy hat things. Deeply spiritual people, the horse lords were
highly skilled craftsmen, working with leather, bone, bronze, silver, wood and iron, and most
valuable of all, gold. Most Scythian artifacts fall under a distinctive
genre known as ‘animal style’, so called because it chiefly depicted wild animals like
stags, wildcats, birds, horses, bears, wolves, as well as mythical creatures like Griffins. This naturalistic art style was applied to
crowns, belts, headsets, hairpins, earrings, combs, mirrors, belt fasteners, among other
things. These luxuries were mainly status symbols
for the elites of Scythian society. Tattoos were common among both men and women,
who used soot and bone needles to inject dark patterns under their skin. These markings depicted wild predators and
mythical beasts attacking prey animals as a display of the chaotic, violent harmony
of nature. Tattoos were probably administered upon worthy
warriors to commemorate acts of bravery, or as some sort of magical protection from the
spiritual powers that be. The languages spoken by the Scythians most
likely belonged to the Eastern Iranian language family, which made them distantly related
to the tongue of the Ancient Persians. Not that a haughty Magi in Persepolis would
have seen much in common with his long removed, war-like, nomadic northern cousins. Daily life among the Scythians was hardy and
hearty. They travelled around the steppe with convoys
of covered wagons, in which the women and children rode while the men remained on horseback,
herding flocks of sheep, cattle and goats. They settled in fresh grasslands by rivers,
allowed their herds to drink and graze, before moving on to fresher pastures. Their diet relied heavily on the meat and
milk of their herds. As they often lacked good timber, the Scythians
used bones and animal droppings to fuel the fires which roasted their meat. The Scythians were heavy drinkers- with their
favourite beverage being an alcoholic concoction fermented from mares’ milk, which was also
a staple of later nomads. More humorously to our modern sensibilities
is the Scythian usage of a certain psychoactive leaf. Indeed, marijuana was regularly enjoyed by
the nomads, who mainly used it in rituals, where it was burned in pits and cauldrons
so everyone could get intoxicated from the vapours. Due to a lack of reliable sources, the social
structure of the Scythians is something of a mystery to us. They may have followed the “trifunctional
hypothesis”, which implies a tiered society divided into warriors, priests and commoners,
which some scholars claim was the defining framework of most early Indo-European societies. Tiered as it was, Scythian society was still
remarkably egalitarian for its time. Scythian women had many personal freedoms
that were not afforded to women in settled civilizations. Many were raised learning how to ride, shoot
and hunt alongside men. Archaeological evidence shows that in war,
they fought alongside men in significant numbers. To the Ancient Greeks in particular, the ferocity
of Scythian wives and daughters were such a novelty that they became associated with
the myth of the Amazonian warriors. Politically, the Scythians were divided into
several large tribal confederations. It appears that at times, certain tribes would
rise up and establish domination over all the others. Herodotus wrote that during his time, the
most powerful of Scythian tribes were the Paralatae, known also as the “Royal Scythians”,
and they looked upon all the other tribes “in the light of slaves”. One thing seems certain, Kings and Chieftains
amongst the Scythians held immense power. This is evident by some of the only permanent
structures the Scythians left behind- massive burial mounds, in which their highest royalty
were interred alongside all their earthly riches, slaves, and finest horses, a monument
to the magnitude of their legacy. Indeed, it is because of these massive tombs
that most surviving Scythian artifacts were preserved into the modern day. As we have touched on, war was one of the
core pillars of Scythian culture, and the lords of the steppe were always ready for
battle. Scythian tactics revolved around the ability
to maneuver easily around the heavy cavalry and cumbersome infantry of the armies of the
‘civilized’ world. The Scythians were the first culture in world
history to perfect the mounted archer unit, which would be the backbone of so many future
nomadic armies. The principal weapon of the Scythian was the
composite bow made from wood, horn, sinew. The accuracy of these marksmen was deadly. A horselord born in the warrior caste would
have been trained to shoot from the moment they could walk, and their bow would have
been like an extension of the arm. The Scythians were not a one-trick steppe
pony though, and they were also formidable opponents at closer range. They wielded short swords known as Akimakes,
as well as daggers and battle axes. They were deadly with the throwing javelin,
and employed the use of heavy iron spears as a sort of proto-couched lance to crash
through lines of heavy infantry. It should be noted that not all Scythians
fought on horseback. Some components of their armies were probably
footmen, but the lion’s share were certainly saddled up. Throughout much of the 1st millennium BC,
the Scythians and their sister tribes would fight with, conquer, or otherwise influence
mind-bogglingly vast territory, and enter the historical records of a diverse array
of ancient cultures. The first wave of campaigns undertaken by
Scythians proper began in the early 7th century BC, when they burst onto the scene and engaged
in a century's worth of warfare upon the civilizations of the Caucasus and the Middle east. First, they devastated the ancient Kingdoms
of Urartu and Assyria. Following up on this momentum King Madye,
pushed further south, launching an expedition into Egypt. Cowed by the massive horde at his doorstep,
Pharaoh Psamtik I bequeathed the Scythian King with lavish gifts in order to spare his
Kingdom. In 612BC, the Scythians allied with their
Iranian Cousins, the Medes, sacking and destroying the Assyrian capital Nineveh, toppling the
Assyrian Empire in the process. This alliance soon fell apart upon their victory,
with the Medes turning on the Scythians, forcing them back into their Pontic homeland. Thus began a centuries-long rivalry between
the Nomadic Iranians and their sedentary Iranian relatives, a trend that would continue when
the Persian Achaemenid Empire was founded in 550BC. Known best for their immortal struggle with
the Greek city states, this quintessential Persian Empire had a complex relationship
with the nomads to their north. Many Scythians served as mercenaries and vassals
to the Persians, but many more refused to submit their quota of earth and water to the
King of Kings, defying the Empire’s attempts to subjugate them. Perhaps the greatest of Achaemenid Kings Cyrus
the Great, conquered the wealthy Lydians, the mighty Medians, and ancient Babylonians. But when he turned his ambitions northwards,
he would finally meet his match. In a campaign into what is now southern Kazakhstan
in 530BC, Cyrus came to blows with the culturally Scythian Massagetae tribe, led by a firebrand
warrior-queen, Tomyrus. Tomyrus was able to defeat Cyrus in a clash
that Herodotus called “the fiercest battle fought between non-greeks ever seen.” There, the Persian King was slain, and his
head claimed by the victorious Queen. Cyrus’ successor Darius I would once again
try to subjugate the horse lords in 513BC, this time, focusing on the tribes north of
the Black Sea. According to Herodotus’ account of this
campaign, the Scythians did what they did best, refusing to engage in pitched battles,
while using their light cavalry to constantly harass the cumbersome Persian force, drawing
them deep into Scythian territory, all while burning pastures, smashing wells, and raiding
Persian supply wagons. Eventually, Darius was forced to retreat. At the end of this campaign, the Scythians
had lost a good chunk of their best pasture land to their scorched earth policy. Nevertheless, the nomads retained their independence,
and in the decades that followed, they would slowly recover. As one might have guessed from Herodotus’
constant appearance in this video, the Scythians have an extensive history with the Ancient
Greeks, with the two worlds mainly intersecting along the northern coast of the Black Sea. The Greeks had had colonies in this region
since the 7th century BC, but it was in the 4th century Bosporan Kingdom that Greeks and
Scythians truly began to live in harmony with one another, thriving as partners in the local
fish, grain and slave trade. It was here that a unique style of Greco-Scythian
art developed, with Greek artisans crafting ornate gold pieces for Scythian customers,
featuring both the old Scythian animal style, and Greek humanistic forms as well. This Hellenic influence on Scythian material
culture would extend throughout the Ponto-Caspian steppe, affecting not only Scythian art, but
their arms and armour too. That is not to say that the Scythians always
maintained peaceful relations with the Greeks. On the contrary, some of their most devastating
wars were fought against the Hellenic world. In the latter half of the 3rd century BC,
a man known to the Greeks as Ateas had become among the most powerful of Scythian Kings,
ruling a vast confederation of tribes between the Danube and the Don rivers. In 339BC, he turned his territorial ambitions
southwards, past the Thracians, and into Macedon. The Kingdom was still a generation away from
the reign of Alexander, but the Great One’s father, Philip II, was a military genius in
his own right and more than a match for the Scythians. That same year, Scythian cavalry came head
to head with the Macedonian phalanx on the plains of modern-day Dobruja. King Philip won a decisive victory, King Ateas
was killed in battle and his army was scattered, his tribal confederation shattering into pieces
upon his death. This greatly weakened the power of the Scythians
in the Pontic Steppe. On that note, let us turn away from the west,
and take a look at Scythian influence in the east. Like the western tribes, the Scythian on the
Asian end of the Altai mountains were composed of many diverse tribes, but collectively are
generally referred to as the Saka. Records of their existence are found as far
east as the annals of Han Dynasty China. According to the Chinese, the Sakas originally
lived between the fertile Ili and Chu river valleys, between present day Kyrgyzstan and
Kazakhstan, but in the early 2nd century BC, they fell victim to a classic phenomenon known
as the nomadic migration domino effect. The mighty Xiongnu, predecessors of the Huns,
pushed the nomadic Yuezhi people out of their homeland in modern day Gansu, China. As a result, the Yuezhi were forced on a mass
exodus westward, making war on the Sakas and pushing them out of their homeland. Thus, the Sakas in turn were forced to find
themselves a new home. To that end, they saddled up and thundered
into the fertile hills of Bactria. At the time, this land was the furthest eastern
edge of the Hellenic world, a rich, urban Empire ruled by the Greek Descendants of Alexander’s
army. By 132BC, the Sakas had subjugated the eastern
Hellenes and become the masters of the region. The Sakas did not stop in Bactria, but rode
further south, through the Hindu Kush and past the ancient Indus river. Indeed, for a time, a branch of the Scythians
established domination over much of North-Western India, deposing the Indo-Greek Kings who had
ruled there before. The Scythian presence in India would endure,
in some form or another, for over four centuries. Following in the footsteps of the Indo-Greeks,
the Indo-Scythians quickly adopted Buddhism as their faith, slowly abandoning their nomadic
steppe roots to assimilate into the culture of their sedentary Indian subjects. Another place the Saka-Scythians had a presence
was in the Desert Kingdoms of Khotan and Shule in the Tarim Basin. It’s not entirely clear how the Saka arrived
here, but it was probably via their Kingdoms in India. It’s equally unclear whether the peoples
of Khotan and Shule were predominantly ethnic Scythians. However, the common languages of these Kingdoms
were Eastern Iranian dialects closely related to the Scythian tongue, which suggests that
descendants of the steppe nomads were the dominant population in the region. Whatever the case, these Kingdoms were heavily
Indianized and Buddhist. The arid desert offered little in the way
of grazing land, so nomadic pastoralism was not an option. Instead, the population flourished in dense
cities built upon oases and rivers. It was a far cry from the grassy plains and
rugged nomadic lifestyle in which Scythian culture was born, but it could be argued that
some form of Scythian culture, albeit hybridized and evolved, survived in this region. The most notable legacy of these oasis states
is their interaction with the Middle Kingdom. As China’s Han Dynasty expanded westwards
under the reign of Emperor Han Wudi, they came into contact with the cities of the Tarim
Basin. At various points throughout the 2nd centuries
BC to AD, the Indo-Scythians of the Tarim Basin were tribute paying vassals of Imperial
China, who used the region as a buffer zone to prevent being flanked by their greatest
enemy, the nomadic Xiongnu. Eventually, like with all peoples and cultures,
the Scythian world transitioned from it's golden age into its twilight years. Over the centuries, different people groups
would come and replace them in different chunks of their traditional heartland. In the early centuries AD, the Scythians proper
were largely subjugated by their Iranian cousin tribes, the Sarmatians. The Sarmatians continued the legacy of Iranian
nomadic pastoralism in the region for a time, before being subsumed by the same wave of
Gothic and Hunnic invasions that would eventually take down the Western Roman Empire. The Slavic expansions between the 5th and
10th centuries AD ended the Scytho-Sarmatian presence in the Pontic Steppe for good, and
before long, the Iranian nomads had assimilated into the medieval forebears of Russians, Belarussians
and Ukrainians. In India, the Scythians eventually lost their
territories to other power players in the region like the Sassanids, Indo-Parthians,
and Guptas. Whatever cultural presence they had in the
region was eventually absorbed into the Indian mainstream. Meanwhile, the Scythians of the Tarim Basin
and most of central Asia were largely displaced and assimilated by a wave of early Turkic
migration from the 6th century AD onwards. A legacy we still see today, as the majority
of modern central Asia is Turkic speaking. The Scythian world was largely gone by the
early middle ages, but the Scythian people were not wiped out entirely. The Medieval Alans, who established a powerful
Kingdom in the Caucasus between the 9th and 13th centuries AD, were believed to be the
descendants of Queen Tomyrus and the Scythian Massagetae tribe. While their Kingdom was wiped out by the Mongol
invasion in 1239AD, they remained in the region into the present day, in the form of the modern
Ossetian people. Today, the Scythians are a faded memory, a
footnote in the history books of Greece, Iran, India and China. Yet, as army after army of horse riding, bow
shooting nomadic warlords thundered across the Eurasian Steppe over the centuries, whether
they acknowledged it or not, they were building upon the legacy of the Scythians, the first
and original horselords of the Ancient world. Our series on the ancient civilizations will
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we will catch you on the next one.
Who says they were the original horselords? Is that a known fact? Genuinely asking - many steppe peoples used horses.
Yes, Scythians (or Saks) are covered in Kyrgyz history classes.
Yasssssss. Literally watching this now and hopped on the sub.
Yes, every year a different stage in history is taught in Uzbekistan, 6th grade is when you learn about the earliest of human history and there are units where you learn about ancient central asian history.
QasSaq - True Scythian
They're also taught in Ukraine!
Of course it is taught in I think every CA countries, but that doesn't mean everyone knows about it. If you study hard and actually have interest in history, then you will eventually learn it I guess. The problem is not everyone has interest in history nowadays.
Revenge of the Scyth